


Dance With Me

by fairyminseok



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Happy Birthday, M/M, i think, sorry dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 20:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12825222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairyminseok/pseuds/fairyminseok
Summary: Chanyeol purchases a dream on his birthday to have the dance he never got to have.





	Dance With Me

**Author's Note:**

> CW; mentions of gore, sadness, creep factor?, unedited and written via word vomit, nonsensical

_I want to dance_ He tells Chanyeol, and his voice sounds just as it always had, silky with a sharp edge. It echoes and fades with each syllable but its just as demanding as Chanyeol remembers it. _It's your birthday I want you to dance with me._

Chanyeol knows the voice doesn't belong to him, as none of the other voices belong to them either. He breathes in heavy, shaking as though each breath through his lungs is equipped with the sharpness of a razor blade, ones that shriek in his mind as they tear through his throat. 

The figure before Chanyeol is familiar, distorted along the edges and shadowy like the corners of the dark room. 

("Some dreams may become nightmares," She had warned him. "Don't let your mind die"). 

_Will you dance with me? Please?_ The figure whispers, and a warm hand encloses around Chanyeol's cold, shaking fingers. His face is still beautiful, delicate features and trusting eyes, but the image is blurry and Chanyeol can see the scars. Jagged ones that make the trusting eyes pop from their sockets, ones with caked on blood on the fingers that enclose Chanyeol's. The figure is walking forward but he only has one leg, cut off above the knee with a piece of scrap metal still lodged into it. 

The shadows in the corners of the room grow larger, and the lights above them, chandeliers of magnificent size that light up a grand ballroom begin to flicker. Chanyeol chokes on his own breath and stumbles backwards, images flooding through his mind and into the room in front of him as he morphs his own dream into darkness. 

Screeching tires and Chanyeol crawling from the drivers seat, his arm trapped underneath a broken steering wheel. Sirens in the distance as he hits a concrete ground, and the chandeliers above him begin to violently swing. There's a baby crying somewhere, but all Chanyeol can see is the mangled figure in front of him, a smile on its dead face. 

The ballroom turns into a dark, icy road, stretching out from a tunnel into a city of freezing rain that blows around them. The beginning of winter and conditions weren't good that day. The beginning of winter and they were going dancing. There's a car on the far side of the ballroom, in much worse condition than the car Chanyeol has crawled from, and the concrete below him returns to marble. 

_They're all dancing_ The body next to him murmurs quietly, desperation pouring from its mouth with blood. And Chanyeol can see them, shadowy figures dancing expertly, three steps to the left and two forward. The figure drags itself up onto Chanyeols thigh with fingers that dangle from their sockets. 

He hadn't been wearing his seat belt, neither of them were. 

("The family had a baby," A nurses voice rings in Chanyeol's ears, and he can hear the beeping of hospital equipment. "And him here. He had a fiance." 

"It's a shame," The other nurse says with sympathy, hollowed by years of death and disease. "They had just legalized that.")

 _Dance with me Chanyeol_ , The figure says, and its eye to eye with him now, a shell of the person he used to know, used to love. _Don't you still love me? You said you would no matter what._

The breath that hits his face smells like decay, but Chanyeol isn't shaking anymore. "I do," He says. "I'm sorry."

 _Happy Birthday,_ Chanyeol closes his eyes. It's his birthday and he just wanted to dance, to pretend that the monster in front of him is still his fiance, and not a mangled corpse that he'd created. 

He never opens his eyes.

***

Yerim pokes at the man's eyes, her own weary. She's seen this too many times to feel sorry for them anymore. "Another casualty," She calls out, her voice tired.

"At least he paid first," Joohyun says, and she grimaces as she walks over. She'll never get used to this. Running a business where customers can live out a dream is dangerous when the human mind is so fragile and any good dream can just as quickly become someone's worst nightmare. 

Yerim shrugs and walks away, her eyes flashing to the rainy streets outside the shop. More customers during the rainy season. They miss the sun and its comforting lies. 

It won't be the only death tonight.


End file.
